


their silhouettes

by kurojiri



Series: Tuna AU Challenge [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, Drowning, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Near Death Experiences, Siren Luna Lovegood, Solider Tom Riddle, Time Skips, Tom Riddle is Not Voldemort, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-20
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27639307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurojiri/pseuds/kurojiri
Summary: The longer he went on knowing of her existence, the more he wished he could see their silhouettes melting into one more frequently considering how sporadic the universe allowed for them to meet face to face.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood/Tom Riddle
Series: Tuna AU Challenge [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1395841
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7
Collections: RAREHPBINGO





	their silhouettes

**Author's Note:**

> It feels so good to post another Tuna Fic. Thank-you in advance for to anyone that gives this fic a chance !
> 
> Prompt: Luna/Tom

War had never scared him or gave him the same scars that most mortals were prone to.

He could never fully explain that there had always been a borderline fascination with that subject as he grew up. As if, there was a piece of him that had been born to learn all aspects regarding it. The subject was always able to be wined down to his soul with ease as he learned about its placement with humanity. The battlefield was a place where he could faintly belong to, let alone call home. A moment that made sense when all else didn’t. It may have split him with the rest of his comrades when he met them, but Tom didn’t care.

He just knew that he had a pull to walk in and register without a fuss when it was time for him to be drafted. Since it did give him a chance to examine and learn how it felt to be placed into the drums of war directly.

The war had dragged into the soils of his orphanage, seeing that the damage straggled most of the walls there. Luckily, most of the children and patrons hadn’t been there due to evacuation rounds. But it still shook the building and forced Tom to see first-hand of war; and the chaotic mess that he witnessed, he found that he had liked it. The madness painted a turn for his life. He, of course, knew of his mortality, but he had respected war. Understood it too as it had flashed its destruction in the steps of where his childhood once rested.

The moment his name had been called the letter had not burned. The simple order had been a waking call from his own blood. His goodbyes were short and unneeded. The pack of his clothes and small processions were less heavy after the evacuation. It had been a short journey with Tom getting registered, having filled with a new uniform and once again having to make pleasantries with strangers as his name had been processed. He may have been a boy, but war never cared about that little fact.

In the face of death, age and health made no significant changes. Tom had come around to that when he saw the range of ages, and generations that had been called. They had been nameless then, and even still now.

When he received a new bed and schedule for training Tom did his best to find why the call of war didn’t devastate him like the rest.

The average hours of when he spent on a quiet night had dwindled. And when his name and group had been called, he heard it again: the drums of death. They had grown into elusive instruments as they murmured into his ears when he stepped into the fields or towns. He could always capture the melody of bodies falling and fading. They were often louder in the beginnings and endings of each battle.

It had been a hauntingly beautiful experience for him. Like black veils made of silk touching his skin when Tom held his weapon and aimed when he felt another pair of eyes watching him. He always managed to soak in the earth’s wails when his opponents didn’t last long. 

And as clock work, Tom went along his way listening to the world as platoons clashed with each other.

* * *

It had been an abnormal night, with the winds whipping his face as the rain had been relentless every time he walked out of any building. In the midst of his musing a war went on. Tom Riddle had believed that coincidences were not linked with destiny. Not since his long stay in Wool’s orphanage for the last seventeen years. Yes, he had been able to leave that place for good when he had been drafted, but somehow Tom couldn’t escape the way his memories dragged him back to those days. When Tom had wondered what and where the world would take him.   
  
Obviously, he hadn’t thought that the war would have been the exact form for him to explore the continent. Or when there had been time off for him to be allowed to explore the way his emotions were dragged when he met her.   
  
She was like if the sea and moon created a being from each other. Someone he knew that could and _would_ spell for Tom to feel funny. Her laugh had been the first clue.   
  
He hadn’t caught her name the first time they met. But she had been ungodly distinct. Between the rest of perky faces and flirty pouts, her messy silver blond hair had been a sight. Her eyes, so lively and dreamy had been the embodiment when the moon hung out the bright stars at night. Tom couldn’t ever forget a face like hers.   
  
And he hoped that she wouldn’t forget him when he left town the following morning.   
  
Tom Riddle didn’t believe in destiny, but that didn’t mean that he stopped hoping for a chance of meeting in finding her again after the war was done. 

* * *

Unworldly. She had a deadly charm about her when reminders of her came up to him. Each spilled in ill-timed moments.   
  
Tom had been in the middle cleaning up his side and locating any injured company when a shade of silver hair pinned down by a white nurse hat flashed by him. His heart stopped. His teeth biting the side of his mouth.   
  
He didn’t turn around.   
  
(But he had wanted to. _Badly_.)   
  
Tom instead steeled himself to grab the closeted person that had been tucked inside a trench. Their pained groans and cold hands thanked him when he half carried him back to camp. He continued on, marched to the groove of when death sunk its teeth for a last slip of the fading bodies all around them.   
  
Just like clockwork.   
  
He needed to stop that tick of freezing when he caught that particular shade of blond in crowds. It could kill him. It would have if he did not have the reflexes that he trained himself to have. But how could someone blame him when she had been so incredibly rare species to find in this time and age. 

* * *

The meeting had been something that he couldn’t write off. He had tried. Oh, did he try when her figure vanished in front of him.  
  
Tom had been minding his own business. Walking. Mourning for whatever he was supposed to do when half his platoon died off from the months of losing limbs from infection or the bullets that kept on hitting their targets like they were intended. Some had been taken away. By their own woes, by their own stupidities or by other factors Tom didn’t want to discuss. Because, what had been the point?  
  
What had made them humans? Their sympathy and empathy? Or was it the conscious fact of wanting to prolong a force greater than them?  
  
He didn’t know what to do then. When all the stars had been shining and where the sea and land united, she had been there. With no shoes, her dress had been discolored and tattered from being used too often near the sea. She had looked wild. Untouchable by man itself. It had intrigued him to find someone that had torn herself from the norm. From the society that didn’t understand him, and he to them.  
  
She didn’t goad him to change. But she had been very open. So much he couldn’t fathom that he would ever be able to comprehend the utter nonsense she had told him.  
  
Nonetheless, in her essence it was there!  
  
The very secrets of his life that he wanted to explore. She held out her palm towards his hand. He hesitated his next move when their skin made contact.  
  
(It had been very cold, colder than the ocean waves that soaked his ankles.  
  
But when their skin touched, his veins felt so alive.) 

* * *

The war went on.  
  
Regardless if he had an inkling about what to do about his tomorrows. They weren’t promised as other civilians or rather, certain areas of countries that didn’t get attacked like his own home did. London would not be his first choice of coming back to, but when he needed to see something familiar, he had to admit that the nostalgia of it had been what he craved. Anything to let Tom have a sigh without the terminal loneliness of being without a home parted with him. He just needed that.  
  
Anything tangible for him to grasp after he woke up from that night.  
  
She had disappeared on first light, when the moon waned and the ocean waves pulled away from the rock, he slept in. His coat had kept him warm and with no sign left that he had met her but only in his memories. It had been a sad drink for his heart to see it unfold. A trait and feeling that had been agonizingly alien for him to undergo. It had ended up making him numb when he cleaned his knees and walked back to the path where civilization was.  
  
Not that the trip there had done him any favors. They never did when he noticed how much he missed the smell of the salty air that the beaches could only give him when he remembered her silver eyes.  
  
He hadn’t realized it when he aged again. Calendars were not as often provided to many soldiers, and he, well, Tom Riddle hadn’t bothered to keep track about how he stayed fighting like the rest. He had no letters to write for someone else to read them let alone, to wait for someone else’s response. He had no need to pose for photos either. All the months of trying not to die and listen to death’s sympathy had been what he needed to stay occupied when he didn’t think about her. She became a living ghost in his thoughts. Always managing to step into his focus.  
  
Always making Tom wonder if he had gone mad long ago and had instead made her up. He couldn’t put it past him into running into a circle like that, he had never been a social person that could connect to strangers; and she, she had been far too interestingly alien to be a common girl he randomly met by pure fate.  
  
No.  
  
Tom must have finally got hit too many times by stray bullets and had instead been taken away to a remote hotel that had been hastily made into a low fund hospital for the mentally afflicted. If he concentrated long enough, maybe he could hear the flutter of a loose spine of a book being pressed to his hands. The wind would be far less harsh and the sunlight would be fanning the whole dull room that would have been temporarily his, as someone well-meaning would have pushed him into there as a forgotten decoration because not all soldiers were heroes that demanded first class treatment.  
  
That would make sense after all his troubles that he collected when he wanted to listen to the devil orchestrate a whole rhapsody that no mortals but him alone could decipher.  
  
But then. But then! Her ghost had touched his heart all too well. Like a siren roaming in the corners of his journeys and endlessly capturing his sanity. She had become a staple of his monologues. One day Tom would understand the insanity of him hearing the devil and death making a pact. He would see how it all connected with her.  
  
But until then, Tom Riddle, supposed he would have to record everything eventually by the stray blank pages from a journal a comrade gave when he noticed how Tom kept muttering soft melodies he heard when they cleaned up their equipment after another skirmish between the major battles. That had been a start. And, a new beginning of itself when he saw a pattern of musical notes had clashed when her image came when he had a pen and ink ready to fill the pages.  
  
It would all make sense, he told himself. It would. 

* * *

On a warm spring day, just as he was coping in small intervals, Tom had seen that he had not been dreaming. The gun shot that hit his hip, had narrowly missed anything major as it had shocked his whole body. Most injuries prior had been small compared to the blood that had doused the earth now. It all seemed quite a sight. For him, a man now after living inside the war for most of his young years had grown accustomed to the smell of gunpowder and fresh iron that blood produced. His own forehead had been sweating, his eyes seemed to take into making everything appear to have a double reflection.  
  
He knew that he could be saved.  
  
Yet, that had not stopped for Tom to wonder if he would ever see her again. If, for some reason only that Death knew himself, would let him stay on the ground as the gunshots went on. He could not fully right himself up.  
  
But he had wanted to. The gun had not fallen far away from him. He could stretch out for it, could bend to one side and press on the wound. A medic had heard him wail in pain; it all could work out.  
  
(But then, why did Tom choose to sink down on the earth and listen as the earth danced to the beat of life and death wrestling for command?)  
  
She did not appear beside him on his deathbed.  
  
And simply, because, death didn’t want him either. The war zone left him cold, sweating but overall fine. The loss of blood had only made his light-headedness seem like he had been dragged on the soil for hours but eventually the darkness turned into light that came beyond his eyelids. If she were not a ghost, then surely, she would have visited? Or did that mean that his mind still liked to play tricks with himself?   
  
He had been placed on bed rest for the remaining week, where the seconds went on longer than he thought were possible. It hadn’t been his favorite time ever given that he was not immune to the smell of infections and wounds that reopened by the screaming patients. Where the souls that had been cracked and wanted to be released from their world altogether. Tom never understood those individuals, but that hadn't meant that he didn’t scoff at their agony. Instead, he had listened to the inner clock that their bodies were made of; they got tangled, some were cut so suddenly and few were mended. But it had been in the ones that were silenced that he knew death had heard their wishes.  
  
Most of those departures hadn’t been as swift or forgiving.  
  
Nonetheless, it had been expected for people like Tom that had grown so much closer to death and war. From his youth where he wanted to gain a real home in those terrains, he had cultivated a type of wisdom. Inherently as he was mortal it did not rationalize his obsession over her. Nobody had ever gotten close to her beauty, to her eccentric behavior and imprint she had painted on his heart.  
  
It had made sense why the sea borders always haunted him. When the rain hit his body they all reminded him when he saw her shadows, when he thought he heard her laughter behind him.  
  
She had never spoken directly at him since that night.  
  
And that had been hard to swallow, because it made him wonder what had been the point for her to grab his attention if she only wanted to taunt him. To make him crumble by the sound of her voice. It had been a cruel existence for him. To have lived for war and death and then to be infatuated by the moon and seas as they had been the extension of her.  
  
If she commanded the seas the way she held over his sanity, Tom was sure that he would never be able to escape from her. Nor, did he want to. She was—Tom could see that a life without her meant that he could never see what laid beyond that.  
  
Not that a normal life had suited him anyways.

* * *

When he was able again, by their standards he had his hair cut again. The clothes he borrowed were not perfectly trimmed for his thin figure, but it was something he could use for the time being. His mind was foggy though. The kind that felt like cotton was plugged to his ears and his mouth was dry no matter the cups of water he drank. Strange.  
  
It had been a while since he took a stroll by the ocean.  
  
Maybe that had been why no one wanted him near a body of water since it had been a place where he almost lost his life once. But what they didn’t know was that Tom had been prepared to see her. To have that iron taste become salt. To have the waves wash his wounds while he could soak in the sight of her sad smiles. Her slim hands would reach down to cup his face, and he would just listen to her, to death playing in the background.  
  
It wouldn’t have scared him.  
  
But then she hadn’t come then. And he had been wondering why they couldn’t hold one conversation where he didn’t feel like he was the only one invested into their futures.

She had once told him that she longed for more todays than tomorrows. And he had not understood. Because wouldn’t anyone sane would want more tomorrows? But when she had looked at him, and when the ocean waves had circled to his feet, he almost understood the need to live in the present. With her, it felt like Tom wanted to rearrange his sensibilities.  
  
If only to be closer to the way she lived. Contentions like that meant that he would have to compromise. That he would eventually come to the conclusion that he was never sane.  
  
He may have been born a bastard son. A forgotten orphan and a broken soldier, but she had made him feel like he could take over the world if he wanted and succeed.  
  
So he limped all the way back to the first sign of the beach. The same one from the town he first met her. Most buildings had been in the middle of construction. Or left to rot. They didn’t look at his direction. Not even when he slid down the rocky sections where the water was lively. The sand had become heavier in his socks, but he had ignored it when he closed his eyes patiently.  
  
The wind had been kinder that afternoon.  
  
No one bothered to call after him.  
  
No one until he felt the waves hush. The salt dimmed for a second until it brushed and sloshed itself inside his nose. He was sure his nose wrinkled.  
  
But before he could touch his own face another set of colder hands did. Softly at first that he was pretty sure it had been just a memory that often ridiculed him when his isolation posed a threat to his future. Yet what stopped his heart for one painful second was that when that hand urged for him to lean down a soft cheek had touched one side of his. The heat of another human being was there.   
  
Her skin still stung his blood when he opened them to memorize the way she looked untouched by time.  
  
When she pulled away, his eyes took in the grey of her eyes, how bleached and fair her hair was that it almost blended to his snow-white skin. Her clothes were moderately fixed. Still they clung in the direction that most clothes did when they were wet. He made the motion to strip off his jacket when she declined his offer. He should have been annoyed by that gesture; but when she was there again after a long period of separation he caved by clinging to the way she kissed his forehead. Tom leaned in to her embrace quickly after that.  
  
If this encounter was all in his mind, then he would thank his insanity for producing such a lovely image before him.  
  
Anything else would have destroyed him.  
  
Which had been why he was an easy target for her, after all it didn't take much for him to follow her off the rocky surface. To be engulfed by the waves and not fear death when she was there. Singing to him softly in his ears as his lungs burned.  
  
The ocean had never scared him before, and it still didn’t at that moment because she kept saying his name until he couldn’t remember how it felt to be alive before her existence. The last image he could conjure was the way her hair swayed with the water and her lips opening and opening for one more kiss.


End file.
